Q&A: Littleloud talks guilt and gaming with Sweatshop

It was during the first few minutes of playing Sweatshop, a new
flash game by Brighton's Littleloud and the latest production from
Channel 4 Education, that I realised I'm a horrible
monster.

I said to myself, without hesitation, "I need to hire more
child workers!" You see, In Sweatshop's skewed take on tower defence games -- where you're sewing together designer
baseball caps for "CryMark", rather than gunning down demons --
children are cheap, fast and flexible units.

It's your job to churn out as many items of clothing as
possible, while keeping costs down. So in your role as sweatshop
middle manager it pays to omit a few basic human rights, hire cheap minors, ignore feeble excuses like
"dehydration" and treat your prepubescent workforce like resources
in a strategy game.

But as your profit level rockets, so will the paralysing
guilt you feel for mistreating your virtual workers. In the end,
whether you're willing to sacrifice some cash to treat your staff
more humanly, or if you're fine with enslaving kids for a fast
turnaround on the next designer
shoe, is up to you and your conscience.

What made you want to do a game about sweatshop
production?Simon Parkin:Channel 4 Education's job is
to provide educational content to UK teenagers on a variety of
topics that are especially relevant to their lives. As games are
viewed as the most effective way to reach young people within the
channel, every year the team there invites UK indie developers to
pitch games on a number of topics.

Sweatshop was Littleloud's pitch for a game about
the fashion industry, one of the key topics suggested by the
broadcaster for its 2011 slate. As young people generally have limited disposable
income, they are likely to buy cheap, fashionable clothes from high
street retailers who often drive down their prices by employing
sweatshop labour.

The game intends to educate its player as to the conditions
of many of the workers in sweatshops, based on current research and
information. It seeks to highlight the conditions of workers, but
also inform as to the wider pressures that have brought this
particular system into being, highlighting the role of clients,
factory owners, managers and workers down the chain. A game seemed
like a super good way to achieve this.

Do you think games are a good medium for discussing
serious topics?SP: Games are just a medium, so can be used
well or poorly to discuss a serious topic. However, I believe they
have the capacity to be one of the most effective ways to discuss a
serious topic as they cast the player in the role of active
participant. For example, with Sweatshop, you are placed
in a middle management role at a sweatshop, a position that allows
you to understand and build sympathy for both your factory owner
(and the pressures exerted on him by the system) as well as the
humble child worker below you.

By actively role playing in the sweatshop system you are
given an understanding of the issues that drive people within that
system in a way that you could never have as a passive viewer of,
say, a television programme or film. When used effectively, games
can be a powerful tool for educating and informing but perhaps more
importantly, also experiencing issues.

What do you hope people do after playing
Sweatshop?Darren Garrett: Best
result? Players go and open their own ethically-managed factory that provides its workers with the best possible
working conditions.

Failing that, we hope the game opens up discussion on what
is a more complicated issue than it may first appear. It's
definitely not as easy as closing all sweatshops and pressuring
companies to pull out of markets in a knee-jerk fashion. That's not
the message of the game.

It's more about creating a conversation about the bigger
picture; corporate responsibility, and Western consumer demand for
more, cheaper, quicker products. We want to inspire people to think
about whom they buy from and how those companies conduct their
business. Organisations such as Labour Behind the
Label are instrumental in highlighting these
issues.

From a gameplay point we're really interested in seeing how
people play the game, especially whether they want to finish with a
good karma rating or a totally evil one. On a
couple of sites where the game has been reviewed, debate has
started in the comments threads, not about the game but about the
economics of sweatshops. This feels like we've gone someway towards
our goal.

Was it important for you to make Sweatshop funny
and light-hearted?SP: Very much so! The subject matter is
difficult and there's a very real danger that a game like this
could become polemic and preachy. Dark humour helps to neuter that,
as well as hopefully increasing the entertainment value to the
player.

DG: When we decided on this approach it was
in no way to belittle the situation or making light of it. It's
just the most effective way in which to get across what is in fact
a very complicated issue. If the game was a presentation of dry
fact after dry fact you would lose the audience and therefore fail
in your message.

We've really strived to portray the elements of sweatshop
culture as seamlessly as we could into the story and game
mechanics. The only hard facts come at the end of the level to
counter your result with real life.

How did Channel 4 Education help with the game's
production?SP: They paid for it, so their involvement
was crucial! Additionally, the C4 Education helped with the tone
and especially worked to ensure the educational aspect to the
production was on target.

DG: We work very much as a team with
Channel 4, and with something as potentially controversial as this
is was crucial that we got the message right. They also have enough
trust in us as a company and what we're doing from the start and
because of that it's been an incredibly smooth production. However
they do have a few unreasonable demands like asking for cats
everywhere. What can you do?